Beauty And The Beast

You won’t see any animated candlesticks or talking teapots, but the Fairbanks Drama Association’s Teenage Theatre Ensemble production of “Beauty and the Beast” contains plenty of movement and magic.

Director Anna Gagne-Hawes said she has been teaching the Beast’s servants contact improvisation techniques, and the actors’ movements provide energy to the set.

“They’re sort of this sometimes creepy, sometimes beautiful magic of the castle,” she said. “They don’t have any lines, but their movement adds kind of a pop to the play.”

The production is the culmination of FDA’s three-week Drama Project Session, a professional theater training program for youth. It features actors between ages 12 and 18 who do everything from designing and building the set to creating costumes and lighting, Gagne-Hawes said.

“It’s all the kids’ ideas on stage,” she said.

The actors even constructed or found all the props.

“We create theater from scratch,” she said. “It’s a really, really intense three weeks.”

The castle set is a two-level design more than 7 feet high and features a winding staircase that they found in a shed behind the theater, according to assistant director Samantha Luther. She said the kids designed and painted the set; all she did was help put it together.

The film differs from the Disney film and the original tale by including characters such as Belle’s vanity-obsessed sisters and opportunistic brother, and changing her father’s reasons for stumbling upon the castle. In Cocteau’s film, Belle’s father is on his way home from clearing his debts and in order to escape from the Beast’s castle, he has to promise that she will come in his place to die. Belle, who is devoted to her father, is more than willing to go. She realizes the Beast is less a monster than many of the real men she knows.

I’m involved in Girl Scouts,” she said. “My mother is the leader of the troop that I’m in. We just earned our Silver Awards – the second highest. And we’ll be working toward the Gold Award. It involves a project requiring a certain amount of hours.”

Holt has appeared in the school productions of “Fiddler on the Roof” and “Oliver” and has been in plays with Sojourn Productions in Egg Harbor City.

Moore said he expects audiences to be entranced for the three performances of “Beauty.”

“They know the movie, they loved the movie,” he said. “They’ve added some stuff from the Broadway show to this. This should catch their attention.”

Holt said she agreed.

“Everyone’s talented and the choreography is good,” she said. “And the costumes are going to be really cool.”